Remembering Hurricane Camille 51 years later

It was a somber day of remembrance throughout South Mississippi and beyond on the 51^st anniversary of Hurricane Camille.

The Coast took a direct hit from the category five hurricane, still ranking as the second most intense hurricane on record to make landfall in the U.S.

Faith, Hope, and Charity: Maurice Powell didn’t know these three Hurricane Camille victims and on this date, 51 years later, their identities are still unknown, but for the past ten years this lifelong Gulfport resident has turned out to pay his respects at their grave sites in Gulfport. “Those are the three we are here to show our love and respect to-those three victims that weren’t identified. I was going to be here.”

Powell wasn’t born until 1970, the year after Camille made landfall on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

The monster storm wiped out much of the family’s home and belongings. Powell’s family walked away with their lives and lived to tell the tale. “My entire family, I’m the baby of the family, so all of my sisters and brothers and parents as well, they said it was horrible, but they were blessed to be alive.”

Hurricane Camille took the lives of at least 259 people and caused more than $1.4 billion worth of damage. Harrison County Emergency Management Agency Director Rupert Lacy said, “In the state of Mississippi we had 172 that were missing and/or dead, and that includes our three young ladies.”

Lacy was among those who drove by for the Gulfport remembrance ceremony although he and his team have been closely monitoring two tropical waves in the Atlantic. He’s hoping history won’t repeat itself and says we can learn a lot from it. “We ask people not to gauge a storm on past storms. Camille probably cost people their lives in Hurricane Katrina because we used the 24 foot surge benchmark which was catastrophic at that time. In 2005, we saw 29-32 foot storm surge come in. We lost people because they based it on what we knew from history.”